Heritage Days 2013 wrapped up this evening with Lionsfest.
From the firehouse spaghetti dinner and Evening on the Avenue to Lionsfest and my first time at the Great Duck Race, my family and I had a great time this week.
Of course, I’d like to know what you think.
- What’s your favorite Heritage Days event? Why?
- Where can improvements or changes be made to existing events?
- What would you like to see added (if anything) to Heritage Days?
Post your comments below … and join me in thanking all of the dedicated volunteers who make Heritage Days happen every year. It takes hundreds of people to pull this off, and let’s not take them for granted.
South Milwaukee Blog 
The parade is my favorite and I hope it can continue. (It doesn’t use any city funding). Please support the parade!
Heritage days is put on by the South Milwaukee LIONS club. They support the auxiliary police department. They transport eyes to hospitals all over the state of Wisconsin. They do vision screenings for children at the schools and speak with parents so they are referred to appropriate doctors for treatment of any eye disorder. They are a service organization, providing help to the high school programs, and a whole lot of other things in the city. I was disappointed in the weather. Can do nothing about it, but attendance was down. Was it due to Divine Mercy changing their festival?. Were the bands not that well known for draws for people?
I think adding a coffee bar could help. People love their coffee. Changing up the bands a little more. Put in a few more games to draw different age groups. Put up a banner with all the things the LIONS do and have a booth for donations to the organizations. After all, the LIONS money stays in South Milwaukee and people should support a city organization. Maybe CAT could untie some purse strings and support this organization as well. It would be good community service to assist people in need and the programs that help others.
A coffee bar! Yummy! Love it. I wonder if it would draw people who would spend money on other things there, though.
I too heard that the bands weren’t what great this year. That’s the only comment I can make on that. No band would entice me to go as that’s not my thing.
We always love the parade. It seemed shorter and less robust this year, but we still enjoyed it.
Another favorite is the spaghetti dinner at the firehouse. We’re not early supper eaters or we would have gone before the middle school band concert. Bummer that we missed it this year, but we won’t have middle schoolers forever.
Sunday we headed down to Lionsfest for the family day activities. The cookie decorating was yummy and the magic show was enjoyable. Then we headed over for some rides and stayed for the penny scramble and bike raffle. I was embarrassed by the behavior of the adults for the penny scramble. Even when our youngest was 2 we let him get what he got, which wasn’t much. This year he’s 5 and I stood behind him to make sure that he didn’t get hurt. I had to ask the mom who was digging in the same spot as him to help her older child out to allow the kids to participate. I saw a grandma right in there grabbing coins and goodies for her granddaughter and a mom pushing kids out of the way to get coins. I’m not even sure if she had her child near her. I know the volunteer coordinators mean for this to be an enjoyable experience for the kids, but something needs to be done to keep the adults in check. I wonder if having a few more Lions members around reminding people it’s for the kids would have helped or if its just a doomed event.
I would like to comment on Lionsfest from the perspective of someone who lives right across the street from this thing and usually heads out of town on that weekend, but couldn’t do so this year.
It is extremely annoying to listen to very loud generators running all the time with the smelly diesel smoke and the constant screaming from the rides, not to mention the garbage that is in our yard the next day and the hard time getting out of our driveway due to the traffic. It appears that more unsavory types are starting to show up also.
While I appreciate everything the Lion’s club does for the visually impaired (my daughter is totally blind and attends Lion’s camp every year), it would be our choice to have this festival moved to a different venue. Grant park would be good as there are not too many people living there.
While we realize this is probably not going to happen we will keep hoping and leaving town until it does.
The diesel I saw was on 16th Ave and the park is across the street.
You want the LIon money to send your child to camp but do not want to support them? People come to support the cause and have fun. It is no different than other church festivals that raise money. They make the best of it.
Unsavory types are exactly what I saw too much of this year. I didn’t see many people who volunteer for things like the PTOs out on Sunday afternoon.